Things to do on a new Linux installation

With recent release of Ubuntu 14.10, many people might have query in their mind, what should be done on their newly installed Linux distro to run without any problem for long run. In this post we will see few basic things to be done on new Linux installation, so that the installation lasts for years.

Installing Updates

The first and foremost thing to do on a new Linux installation is to update the software package already installed. Method of updating package may differ from distro to distro, but most of the distros comes with GUI based update manager. In case you are unable to find update manager for your distro, you can always use command line to update the system. To update your system, make sure you are connected to the Internet. You can use Software Updater in Ubuntu to update your Ubuntu Box in GUI.

Although these will cover most of the codecs that we use in day to day life, in case you are not interested in installing all these, you can always install VLC media player.

You can install the above said package with Package Manager bundled with your distro. Ubuntu use Application Manager, OpenSuse use yum and like on every distro have different package manager.

Installing Basic Software

Although many distribution comes with these mentioned software, some distribution have to skip these software to keep their release small. To install the below mentioned softwares you can use Package Manager built for your distro.

Few of them are:

VLC: VLC is an open sourced multimedia player capable of playing/streaming almost any type of media file. Installing it is much easier then installing codecs for multimedia files.

LibreOffice: As we have covered about it earlier, LibreOffice is an open source office suite. Though many distribution comes with LibreOffice preinstalled, some distros like “Linux Mint” skips these package to make their release small.

Firefox/Chrome/Chromium: You can install any of these web browser which seems to be comfortable to you. You can easily install it with your package manager. Although we may recommend you to install Adobe Flash Plugin after installing the browser so that most of the flash based website can run peacefully 🙂

Thunderbird: Thunderbird is an easy to use email, chat and feed client which is based on Mozilla Project. It is helpful to access or compose the mail offline, access to feeds offline and can be used as chat client too. Though chat function is not mature enough at the time of writing this article, rest of its feature are working best.

GIMP: GIMP is abbreviation for GNU Image Manipulation Program which is a best till date freely available image editor. You can use GIMP from basic image editing to advance image editing. It is a free alternative to Adobe Photoshop.

Amarok: Needless to say, one needs an nice and easy to use music player. Amarok comes handy when it comes to Music player for Linux. It is one of easy to use freely available music player.

Pidgin: Pidgin is one of the best cross platform chat client available. From Gtalk to Facebook chat, Pidgin can be your best companion for connecting you to your friends, family and to your colleague.

Transmission: Transmission is best available Bit Torrent client. With various option inbuilt, Transmission cab be used to controlled remotely, or to limit upload or download speed or to stop seeding after particular seeding ration is reached.

Dropbox : Needless to say anything about Dropbox. Dropbox is a cloud storage platform which is known for its robustness and cross platform availability. Name the platform, say Android or Linux, the Dropbox sync client is available.

These are some basic software which a person may need to his day to day life using Linux. Though there may be some other software which we might have forgot to add here on list, feel free to suggest to our reader about them in comments.